The present invention relates to a machine translation system for processing an original sentence of a first language to obtain a translated sentence of a second language and, more particularly, to a machine translation system which can improve translation efficiency.
In recent years, various machine translation systems for translation using a computer system have been developed, e.g., a processing system for translating English sentences into Japanese sentences or vice versa, and the like.
A basic processing operation in these systems will be briefly described. Morphemes constituting an input original sentence or its sentence structure are analyzed to divide the original sentence into predetermined processing units, e.g., words (or phrases). A translation dictionary is referred to for each processing unit to obtain a translated word (or phrase) corresponding to the processing unit. The translated words (or translated phrases) are combined in accordance with a given translation rule, thus obtaining a translated sentence.
However, since a reliable technique for interpreting the meaning of a natural language has not yet been established, it is difficult to immediately obtain an appropriate translated sentence through the machine translation. More specifically, the English word "find", for example, has meanings including "to learn", "to perceive", "to come upon", "to attain", "to solve", "to detect", "to uncover", and "to discover". When this word must be translated into Japanese, it has different translated words corresponding to the above meanings. In this manner, a single original word often has a plurality of translation possibilities. In this case, selection of the translated word from multiple possibilities largely influences the quality of translation from an original sentence into a translated sentence.
In a conventional system, a plurality of translation possibilities corresponding to a processing unit (original word) are presented to an operator, and the operator determines and selects appropriate translated words to constitute a translated sentence.
However, even if a translated sentence is obtained in this manner, an inappropriate translated word often still remains in the translated sentence. For this reason, the operator must correct the inappropriate translated word in the translated sentence through post-edit processing.
When such edit processing is performed, if a display device has a fixed display format for the translation result, incorrect choices or selections may be made. For example, when a translated sentence including translated words to be corrected and the original corresponding sentence are displayed simultaneously and translation/edit processing is performed while comparing the two sentences, it is easy to understand the correspondence between the two sentences. However, it is hard to grasp consistency or context in the document. As a result, even though appropriate translated words may be obtained for each translated sentence, the translated sentence may be inappropriate when viewed in the context of in the entire document.
In contrast to this, original sentences and their corresponding translated sentences can be displayed continuously. In this case, the above-mentioned drawbacks can be avoided, and the context or consistency in the entire document can be satisfactorily maintained.
However, with this method, it often is difficult to quickly and reliably grasp the correspondence between the original and translated sentences and that between original and translated words therein.
Thus, the display formats of the translation result impairs the efficiency of the translation/edit processing, thereby interfering with effective post processing.